The Alamut Ambush

They had united, too, to overcome its one disadvantage, labouring through one long, hot summer to build a miniature lift from the first floor to the ground floor. Not that there had been any shortage of volunteers; relays of guests and neighbours had willingly lent muscle-power and technical assistance – fifteen courses of the dummy2

brickwork were Roskill's own: for everyone who knew Mary it had been a sad labour of love.

So the room had become her base rather than her prison, catching the sun the whole day to warm her and giving her a great sweep of landscape as well as the curve of the downland on which to focus the German naval telescope her father had brought back from the Zeebrugge raid.

If she had seen anything on that...

'It's Hugh!' She was awaiting him, already facing the door; she would have heard the distant murmur of voices and no visitor to the Old Vicarage ever left without visiting the end room.

He had forgotten how beautiful she was. There had been some old general – he had read a book about him way back – of whom it was said 'he made old age beautiful', and the same was true of Mary.

Except that sixty years was not old and it was the crippling arthritis and the pain which had aged her, though without tarnishing that beauty. Isobel would age like that, exactly.

She held out her hands to him. 'It's been such a long time, Hugh –

far too long. We've missed you.'

It wasn't a complaint; somehow it implied that the fault was hers, not his, and that she wanted to make it up.

'Mary...' He took the cold, twisted binds.

'It is good to see you, Hugh!'

Her unashamed pleasure cut deep into him. This was the darkest treachery: dearest Mary, I haven't come here to see your eyes light dummy2

up. I've come to ask you what they saw up there on the hill. Did you see anything, Mary? Did you? And did Alan tell you anything?

'It's good to see you too, Mary darling.'

The truth, but what an empty, guilty truth it was!

'I hadn't the heart to come after Harry was killed,' he heard his voice say in the distance. 'I think – I somehow felt I was to blame.

It ought to have been me that time.'

'What a very silly thing to think!' She underlined the word 'silly'; for Mary silliness was the venial sin and only wickedness carried a heavy penance. 'And Harry would be the first to tell you so. You were each promoted, and you weren't to blame for that.'

'It wasn't quite as simple as that, Mary.' He could hear himself still, as though he was listening to a tape. 'I didn't take that promotion because I really wanted it – I took it because I was losing my nerve. I could feel it running out of my boots every time I flew.'

It sounded strange, blurted out just like that, unmasked, the thing he'd kept hidden from everyone but Isobel. And he'd never intended to share it with anyone else, either. Yet telling it to Mary now seemed perfectly natural – it was the curious effect Mary's charisma had on everyone, from the milkman to the vicar. She had never sought confidences, they simply tumbled out in her presence.

Perhaps that was really why he had never returned to East Firle: it was too easy to talk to Mary.

'Hugh! Now that's the silliest thing of all! If you felt like that, then you were right to do what you did, not wicked. If you hadn't you might have killed someone else as well as yourself. But you dummy2

certainly didn't harm Harry.'

The plain facts in black and white, sensible and honest. But that wasn't how the scales of guilt were balanced: guilt was always the might-have-been that could never be outweighed by good sense and honesty.

'Perhaps you're right, Mary.'

'Of course I'm right. And it's all past and done with now – there's no sense in remembering bad things in the past unless they help to make the present better. And I'm sure your present doesn't need any helping.' She patted his hand. 'Are you happy, Hugh? And are you doing a useful job?'

Roskill smiled at her. Happiness and usefulness had always been Mary's criteria for the good life.

'I sometimes wonder whether what I do is useful, Mary. But it's certainly interesting enough.'

She nodded, smiling at him. 'And are you married yet?'

It was on the edge of his tongue to tell her: no, Mary, not married.

But I love a married woman seven years older than I am, with two sons at boarding school and a rich busy husband who doesn't give a damn provided she doesn't rock the boat. And. what the hell am I to do about that, Mary? Just tell me what...

But one slipped confidence was enough for one day.

'No, Mary – not yet, anyway.' He smiled back at her. 'And you –

have you still got your finger on East Firle's pulse?'

'Shame on you, Hugh! You make me sound like a nosey old woman, and I hope I'm not that.'

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